Page 3967 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 23 November 1993
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have in the system, the ratio of teachers to students. My party has no compunction about supporting a motion such as this because this indicates what we have always said about the education system - that teachers are an important component, more important than bricks and mortar.
Mr Berry made the quite scurrilous comment that we were, or I was, in favour of cutting teacher numbers and that we did so in government. He knows full well that our philosophy was to leave teacher numbers intact; that closures of schools did not entail cuts in teacher numbers. That is what we put forward.
Mr Berry: It is another one of your webs of dishonesty; a web of dishonesty again.
MR HUMPHRIES: Madam Speaker, I think that is an unparliamentary comment and I ask that it be withdrawn.
MADAM SPEAKER: I will consider that, Mr Humphries, and come back to it. Continue.
MR HUMPHRIES: Thank you, Madam Speaker. The fact of life is, and Mr Berry knows it, that we proposed no cuts to teacher numbers, which is precisely why neither Mr Berry, Mr Wood, Ms Follett nor anybody in the life of the Alliance Government attacked us for cutting teacher numbers. If we were going to cut teacher numbers, why did you not attack us for that?
Ms Follett: I did.
MR HUMPHRIES: No, you did not. Show us where. You cannot. Madam Speaker, this Government, when it was in opposition, traded on the tag of what a cruel Government it was to be cutting education. That is what they traded on, time and time again. I would have loved to hear some of today's rhetoric from Ms Follett and Mr Connolly about how we have to face up to the facts of the hard, true world. We have to face up to the fact that the Grants Commission has cut our funding. We have to make sure that we deal with this new situation. We cannot keep promising more money.
Where were those words in 1991 and 1990? You did not dare even whisper them. You know full well that you wanted to trade back into office on the basis that you were the defenders of public education. Well, you have been caught out. You are not the defenders of public education. In fact, the twist that this government has now pursued has been the cruellest cut of all; it has done to public education what it would have led its supporters to think would never have come from a Labor Government. Madam Speaker, it gives this Assembly every right to censure the Ministers responsible, and they are principally the Minister for Education and the Treasurer in this Government.
MR KAINE (5.00): Part of the serendipity about this place is the way that the debates run. I think that if Mr Moore had been in the chamber during this entire debate he would have had cause to think whether his motion in the first place was wrongly worded and whether he should not have been censuring the Government because, during the entire debate, we have had the Minister for Education, the Chief Minister and the Attorney-General all jumping up and saying, "It was not only Bill; it was me, too".
Mr De Domenico: And Mr Berry, too.
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